Features

Commonly, multiple screens are connected and the user is required to page through these forms in order to complete their task. This pattern of presentation is called the “Wizard”. Starting with release 8.5.11.0, it is possible to create wizards in Touch UI. The picture below shows an example of a Create Employee Wizard in the Northwind sample database.

Each step of the wizard contains one or more categories. If all categories belonging to a particular step are rendered invisible via the Visible When property, then that step will be hidden.

Let’s implement the wizard shown above.  Start the Project Designer. In the Project Explorer window, switch to Controllers tab. Double-click on “Employees / Views / createForm1 / c1 – New Employees” category.

Make the following changes and press OK to save:

Next, let’s create several new categories. Right-click on “Employees / Views / createForm1” and press “New Category”.

The second category will display in a new column alongside the previous category in the first step of the wizard.

The next category will have the following configuration. Note the use of curly brackets wrapping field names. These will be replaced by the value of the field at runtime.

The last category representing the final wizard step is configured below. Notice that the Visible When property is configured to hide the category when the Title field is equal to the value “President”.

$row.Title != 'President'

Any categories that do not have a “Wizard” property assigned will be displayed on every step, either above or below the wizard content, depending on the position of the category relative to the first wizard category.

Rearrange the data fields as presented in the picture below using drag & drop.

On the toolbar, press Browse to regenerate the app. Once generation is complete, navigate to the Employees page and create a new employee.

Notice that a Status Bar has automatically been defined. The “Prev” and “Next” actions have been automatically injected into the form action group. Enter some values for the fields, including specifying “President” in the Title field.

Notice that the “Employee” tab has been removed from the Status Bar. By pressing “Next”, the Address wizard step will be displayed. The field names surrounded by curly brackets have been replaced with the field values defined by the user.

Note that when using custom form templates, wizards can be defined by encapsulating each step by a container of type “wizard”, containing the attribute “data-wizard-step”. The value of the attribute will be displayed in the status bar. See a simplified example below:

<div data-container="wizard" data-wizard-step="General">
    <div data-container="collapsible" data-header-text="General Info">
        ...
    </div>
    ...
</div>
<div data-container="wizard" data-wizard-step="Address">
    ...
</div>

Every database entity contains a list of properties, stored as columns in the table. These columns are represented by fields in the model and controller. When an entity requires a repeated, varying amount of related information, these properties are externalized to a separate table. This detail entity must be defined as a model in the project, and a data view can be placed under the master entity to display a list of these items.

Let’s take the Northwind sample database as an example. Every order contains a discrete list of properties that are represented as columns in the database. Any number of details for the order can be added. Each order detail contains an OrderID foreign key column, which refers to OrderID primary key of the order record.

In the default app created by Code On Time app generator, a field is created for every column present in the database entity.

The natural next step is to display a list of details in the order form.

Make sure the sample project contains models for both Orders and Order Details database entities. Start the Project Designer. In the Project Explorer, switch to the Controllers tab. Right-click on the “Orders / Fields” node, and press “New Field”.

Enter the following properties:

Press OK to save the new field. Next, drag the new Details field onto “Orders / Views / editForm1” to create a data field in the order form.

On the toolbar, press Browse to generate the application. Navigate to the Orders page and select a record. Notice that a list of related details are displayed at the bottom of the form.

This data view field be placed in any position on the form, or placed in a custom location using a form template.